Anderson County dispatch center a work in progress

Anderson County sheriff’s Capt. Matthew Littleton talks about how the new location for county 911 dispatch center has many electrical grounding wires. The current center on South Towers Street in downtown Anderson was damaged by a lightning strike in July 2011.

Inside an antenna-covered building near the Anderson Regional Airport, Capt. Matthew Littleton points to a series of rectangles perfectly drawn in chalk.

They cover much of the blue carpet where he stands. Where there is no carpet, bright green cables spring from the floor as though they are blades of grass.

Overhead, gleaming metalwork marks the spots where ceiling tile will soon be installed. Right now, the open space above reveals the innards of a new heating and air-conditioning system.

"I think what is most exciting is that this place is truly grounded — that's what these cables and wires mean — this place is grounded according to federal standards," Littleton says. "We shouldn't have to worry about lightning anymore."

This place is his baby — and represents yet another incarnation of a building that has served as a flight service station and as Anderson County's emergency operations center.

There is a new purpose for the building that first belonged to the Federal Aviation Administration and later became Anderson County's nerve center in a snowstorm.

Right now, much of it is cordoned off by yellow police tape.

But by mid-May, this carpeted construction zone will be operating as Anderson County's 911 dispatch center.

The current dispatch center — inside a 63-year-old building in downtown Anderson — experienced a year's worth of plagues that included an electrical fire and an infestation of unidentified insects. County council member Eddie Moore said at a public meeting in 2011 that bug larvae needed to be surgically removed from a dispatcher's back.

But the move to Airport Road was caused by something else: an Independence Day lightning strike of the old building on South Towers Street. County officials said lightning damaged 80 percent of the $3 million in equipment inside the downtown building, including phone lines and computer systems.

All told, the South Carolina Insurance Reserve Fund agreed to give Anderson County $3,282,967.15 to cover the losses from that day.

Interim county administrator Rusty Burns and emergency responders were told that if the dispatch center remained on South Towers Street, Anderson County would not be eligible to have it insured.

"God did this, really," Burns said at a public meeting in October. "That dispatch center is as close to a hellhole as you can get."

Most of the county council members got a tour of the new dispatch center-in-progress Friday. Members of the council's public safety committee­­ — Ken Waters, Tom Allen and Tommy Dunn — were joined by their elected colleagues Gracie Floyd and Francis Crowder.

Taylor Jones, the county's director of emergency services, said the new dispatch center was projected to come in under a budget of $3.1 million.

That multimillion-dollar budget includes a new 911 phone system that will eventually be able to receive text messages instead of just calls. That system alone is estimated to cost just under $1 million.

A radio interface console included in the budget comes with enough equipment for 30 operators at four different locations. That, too, is a little less than $1 million, according to the project proposal that was approved by the council last fall.

Other major pieces of equipment included in the budget are a 911 voice recorder; a computer-aided dispatch system; and hardware for the communications center and for the stations where dispatchers work.

A computer-aided tracking system will allow dispatchers to see the locations of officers' and first responders' vehicles, so they can immediately send the closest person to respond to a given emergency.

Another electronic tool will allow dispatchers to immediately see risks associated with a particular property. For example, a dispatcher would be able to see the list of chemicals that may be used at an industrial site.

Jones and Littleton both acknowledged that some residents have questioned spending at the dispatch center, particularly for items — such as the text message technology — that will not immediately be used.

Both men defended the decision to go forward with as many items as possible, saying that the county saved money by using in-house labor whenever possible, and also benefitted from lower construction and material costs because of the recession.

Jones estimated that the county will save about $190,000 a year just by training its own employees to fix equipment problems instead of hiring outside specialists.

Steve McDade, the director of 911 operations, said Anderson County's spending at the dispatch center is an investment in a service that is handling more calls each year. County statistics show that the dispatch center handled 411,200 calls in 2009 and 539,562 calls in 2011.

McDade projected that dispatchers will handle 552,400 calls this year.

Jones said those numbers alone are reason to move the dispatch center to a safe place and spend what it takes to make it work well.

"We've got to do it right the first time," Jones said. "We've got to, because there are lives on the line."